Billion Year Walk Volunteers

We are falling short. Over 40% of volunteer workshifts have yet to be filled. Spread the Word: We need volunteers to sign up for multiple time slots and get friends and family to sign up. We need volunteers to sign up for the 2019 Billion Year Walk around Oakland’s Lake Merritt on Saturday, July 27, and for positions on July 20 & 21.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of California Museum of Paleontology, the National Center for Science Education, the Frederick E. Hart Foundation for Educational Opportunity, and the Bay Area Skeptics.

We have positions for science docent volunteers, and we have positions for other volunteers.

Minimum qualifications for science docents:
• Degree or equivalent in Geology, Biology, Paleontology, Climatology, or similar
• Good verbal communication skills

Minimum qualifications for other volunteers:
• Appreciation for the importance of good science education
• Pulse

People from all segments of our community will be walking around Lake Merritt throughout the day as families, couples, and individuals. They will read signposts stationed around the Lake with information on the natural history of Earth during the last billion years. Each of the 42 signs has one or more QR codes, mostly for Wikipedia pages. The goals of the Billion Year Walk are to provide the general public with a science experience and to introduce them to Deep Time.

FIRST: Familiarize yourself with tasks and workshift times using these two docs

Volunteer Packet

Staffing Spreadsheet

SECOND: Signup for the workshifts you want. There were over 70 workshifts available before people began taking them. Take as many workshifts as you can without time overlaps.

SignUpGenius

THIRD: Get your friends to also sign up. Post a few flyers where they will do the most good.

Flyer

FOURTH: Do not be late for the 9:30am meeting on Saturday, July 27 at the Rotary Science Center. (You already know where that is because you read the Volunteer Packet.)

Questions? Text or call David Almandsmith at 510-304-4071

24 April- Virtual Skeptics in the Pub
9 May – SkepTalk: The Trollingers

Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

WHAT: Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

This is a casual night of socializing with fellow skeptics. If needed, we will have a number of breakout rooms for quieter conversations.

Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.

WHEN: Wednesday 24 April 7-9pm Pacific (GMT-7)

HOW: Zoom. Join HERE. Passcode: 1023

May SkepTalk

Susan & William Trollinger

WHAT: From Creationism to QAnon: Answers in Genesis and the Culture War

Our book, Righting America at the Creation Museum, came out in 2016. In the intervening years, the creationist organization Answers in Genesis has opened Ark Encounter, remodeled the Creation Museum (in some places as a response to our book), opened a K-12 school, and dramatically expanded its online presence. At the same time, AiG has doubled down on the culture war rhetoric, dismissing climate change (or, as AiG CEO Ken Ham refers to it, “the climate cult”) as a hoax, rejecting the reality of a COVID-19 pandemic (in the process attacking vaccination mandates as oppressive), and working hard to appeal to QAnon devotees (to the point of opening the Ark to the filming of a QAnon video).

To expand on what we said in the “Introduction” to our book, all of us have a stake in understanding what is happening in the world of AiG – including the museum and the Ark – and its role in preparing and arming crusaders for the ongoing culture war that polarizes and poisons U.S. religion and politics. As bizarre as the world of AiG may seem to many Americans, what happens there matters to all of us.

WHO: Susan Trollinger is Professor of English at the University of Dayton. She earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of Pittsburgh, and is the author of Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia (Johns Hopkins, 2012).

William Trollinger is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Dayton. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and is the author of God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and the Making of American Fundamentalism (2nd ed., Tennessee, 2025).

The Trollingers have co-written, among other publications:

Righting America at the Creation Museum (Johns Hopkins, 2016)

“Creationism,” Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism (Oxford, 2023)

“The Bible and Creationism,” Oxford Handbook of the Bible (Oxford, 2017)

and

“From Creationism to QAnon: The Culture War Conspiracism of Answers in Genesis,” which will appear in Isis in the summer of 2025, and from which this talk is taken.

WHEN: Tuesday 9 May @ 7:00 PM Pacific (GMT-7)

WHERE: Online. (Link to come)